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The Paradox of Sovereignty: Authority, Constitution THE PARADOX OF SOVEREIGNTY: AUTHORITY, CONSTITUTION, AND POLITICAL BOUNDARIES By Matt Whitt Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Gregg M. Horowitz Professor José M. Medina Professor Robert B. Talisse Professor Carol C. Gould ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to the teachers who have inspired, encouraged, and challenged me during the writing of this dissertation. Vanderbilt University, and in particular the Philosophy Department, has been an incredibly supportive academic home. At every stage of my education here, I have met new mentors and colleagues who have pushed my thinking in unexpected, exciting, and fruitful directions. All of the members of my dissertation committee have guided me personally and professionally, and traces of their diverse perspectives, concerns, and provocations are legible in the best passages of my dissertation. I consider myself lucky to have been their student, and I look forward to continuing to learn from them. I would especially like to thank Gregg Horowitz, the Director of my committee. I have been continually inspired by his teaching and thinking, and the most profound moments of my education have been our conversations about critical philosophy, politics, and academia. I am also very grateful to Carol Gould and the late George Graham, both of whom have offered insight and encouragement from beyond my department. Several generous grants and fellowships made this project possible. Two summers of research were funded by College of Arts and Science Summer Research Awards, and a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration was funded by a Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies Exchange Fellowship. I thank Carolyn Dever, Dean of the College of Arts and Science, for encouragement and assistance regarding those opportunities. My final year of dissertation work was fully supported by a Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship. I am happily indebted to my colleagues at the Warren Center for their camaraderie and constructive criticism, and I am grateful to Mona Frederick and Polly Case for their constant ii effort on behalf of the Humanities. In the Philosophy Department, Jeffrey Tlumak and Rebecca Davenport have been exceptionally generous with their support and assistance. Inspiration does not only flow from the mentors and role-models who have come before us. Again and again, my curiosity and commitment have been reinvigorated by brilliant friends whose young passions and projects are steadily making the world a better place. Long conversations with Will Funk, Rachel Geer, Sarah Hansen, Jens Frederiksen, Sarah Tyson, Gesa Frömming, Jonathan Neufeld, Melvin Barrolle, and Carlin Wing have enriched my work and my life. I am honored that they have invited me to think and strive with them. With so much work to be done, one could not wish to be in better company. Finally, I am most profoundly and warmly grateful to the members of my family. Biddie, Chip, and Collin Whitt have shown me boundless support and understanding when I needed it the most, Robin Spicer has never failed to tease me exactly when it mattered, and Carlin Wing has been a provocative interlocutor, a perspicacious reader, and a patient and uplifting companion. The ups and downs of this long education have repeatedly shown me how much I need and love them. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ ii INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................v Chapter I. AUTHORITY..................................................................................................................1 Descriptive and Normative Theories of Authority .........................................................4 A Political Account of Political Authority....................................................................37 II. SOVEREIGNTY..........................................................................................................54 Boundedness, Supremacy, and Independence ..............................................................59 Sovereign Constitutive Authority .................................................................................71 Independence and Self-government..............................................................................87 INTERLUDE ...................................................................................................................106 Collective Subjection and the Paradox of Sovereignty...............................................106 The Paradox of Sovereignty between Hegel and Marx ..............................................112 Democratic Circles and the Paradox of Sovereignty ..................................................119 III. THE CIRCULAR LOGIC OF SOVEREIGNTY .....................................................123 Machiavelli .................................................................................................................126 Rousseau .....................................................................................................................143 Constituent Power.......................................................................................................151 IV. DEMOCRATIC PARADOXES AND THE PARADOX OF SOVEREIGNTY.....174 The Paradox of Democratic Constitution ...................................................................176 Closure and Contest ....................................................................................................189 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................220 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................229 iv INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines a paradox inherent in modern ideals of sovereign authority, and argues that several democratic paradoxes identified by contemporary theorists are instances of this more fundamental paradox of sovereignty. By calling attention to the paradoxical nature of modern sovereignty, I aim to do for sovereignty what theorists like Bonnie Honig, Alan Keenan, Seyla Benhabib, and Carol Gould have done for democracy: To show that its importance and value lie, not in the way that it axiomatically frames or founds a particular people’s politics, but in the ways that it invites, sustains, and indeed requires ongoing political contest over the constitution and the identity of ‘the people’ itself. Sovereignty is a very powerful political norm that has been articulated, defined, and enacted in very diverse ways.1 I focus on a modern ideal of sovereignty that is frequently, although perhaps too simplistically, associated with the 1648 Treaties of Westphalia and the subsequent development of the modern interstate system.2 According to this ideal, sovereignty is internally supreme, externally independent, and bounded political authority.3 This basic 1 Several broad studies of sovereignty have been especially influential on my project: F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Steven Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Robert Jackson, Sovereignty (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State and the Self (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Joanne Pemberton, Sovereignty: Interpretations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2 Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). Recent studies have challenged the significance of the Treaties of Westphalia as a clear turning point in the development of modern sovereignty. See John Gerard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47, no. 1 (1993): 139-174; Hendrick Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London: Verso, 2003); Hannes Lacher, Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Territoriality and the International Relations of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2006); Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 3 “Sovereignty requires independence from any outside power and final authority over men who live within certain boundaries.” Strayer, Medieval Origins, 58. This is obviously a simple and schematic conceptualization of a very fluid political ideal, and it will be significantly complicated and clarified in Chapter 2. However, the four components of the general definition (internal supremacy, external independence, boundedness, and authority) comprise a relatively unchanging core that defines modern sovereignty through its various historical articulations. v conception of sovereignty is sometimes regarded as a classical or standard view of sovereignty; throughout this dissertation, I refer to it as the ‘general definition’ of sovereignty or, simply, ‘the modern ideal’ of sovereignty. The modern ideal of sovereignty as supreme,
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